Kickstarter

The Dobot M1 is actually quite a cool little robotic arm. Why? Well for $1400 US you get an arm that can 3D print, laser engrave, solder, pick and place using OpenCV. How accurate is it? 0.02mm accuracy.

If you’re looking for a robotic arm that does all your desktop manufacturing then this is it. For only $1400 US!

At the other end of the scale we have the ShopArm which is designed as a training tool for STEM education. It’s a 3D printed robotic arm that claims 0.5mm repeatability accuracy. That’s pretty good for a 3D printed arm for only $500 US!

Make your own robot! The QuadBot reminds me of the replicators from Stargate SG1, except I don’t think they’re sentient… yet…

It’s one of the better robots I’ve seen around, basically because it doesn’t have boring wheels. Contains an ATmega32u4, WiFi, bluetooth, LiPo and sensors to enable some basic kinematics. Most of the parts are 3D printed, and supports the Arduino IDE, LabView API and Ardublockly.

The Avocado Pi is a small board designed for STEM education that attaches to a Raspberry Pi and comes with a variety of sensors and buttons. This is the second Kickstarter this guy has launched with the previous one being quite successful.

The FiPy, (I’m sure I’m going to get some heat for saying that wrong), is an ESP32 based all-in-one wireless module. It doesn’t just contain wireless and bluetooth, but also LoRa, Sigfox, and cellular LTE.

Holy cow, Batman! My expense budget has just been blown again. So stay tuned for a review on this when they’re shipped.

Oh, they also have a PySense and PyTrack board on offer that the FiPy slots into enabling motion sensing and GPS. Nice.

This is one of those things. This guy is converting old CRT oscilloscope displays into useful items, like a clock. It comes in kit format with everything except the CRT and housing. Note: CRTs contain very high voltages, so this one is only for experienced Makers.

Another STEM product that I was tossing up not to include. It’s a protoboard based board that really doesn’t give any details on what’s on it. I’ll be writing to this guy to get him to provide some more detail. So check back on this one if you’re interested.

The PDK64 is an industrial tablet platform containing a sunlight readable TFT touch display, Allwinnder A64 quad core running at 1.2GHz, 1G RAM, 8G flash, SD slot, WiFi, ethernet, and a standard Pi and Euler GPIO header. All for $118 US! Is this Kickstarter too good to be true? I’ll be keeping my eye on this one so stay tuned.

The SENTINEL is a small device you attach before your 3D print head which will both clean your filament before it gets to the head and also pause your printing should you run out. A nice little add on if you don’t have this functionality on your printer.

We’re starting to see a lot of alternatives to 3D printing. The SafFire is a laser SLA printer that is similar to last week’s UV based printer, but this one claims around 3 micron resolution with a slightly larger print volume.

Another 3D printer, but this one is a photolithographic printer similar to the SafFire. It’s a huge rack sized thing that will print down into the material, but only claims 50 micron accuracy. It uses a standard 1080p projector for setting the resin.

The Fotric isn’t a traditional Maker product, but could be a useful addition to something like a drone. It’s a thermal camera designed to detect any abnormal heat. It claims much better accuracy at detecting a fire than traditional methods with a 80 by 80 pixel sensor and onboard analysis.

Hey! Another 3D printer! However, this one is big. Claiming a print volume of 600mm cubed down to 8 micron accuracy. It contains the Repetier firmware and Azteeg X3 Pro controller board. It’s a heavy duty machine designed to control either laser or traditional 3D print heads.

Oh, look! Another 3D printer. This one is slightly different in that it has 4 extruders. This one looks quite good, but the creator hasn’t put up any specs on the darn thing. If anyone can find any then add it into the comments below.

IndieGoGo

Mioswitch provides a method to physically power on and off your 3D printer. It is based on the ESP8266 and also contains a power meter. So you can set it to automatically turn off when printing has finished, or by smartphone app.

If you already have a laser cutter and are getting frustrated with its low power then you can upgrade the laser module to something that will cut 19mm thick wood. Wow! It’s a fairly quick and easy replacement for your existing laser.

This one is apparently the best 3D printer for creative kids. The Yeehaw is a low cost printer that has a very simplified interface running off your tablet. Has an autolevelling platform and protective door to avoid any potential issues. Looks good.

Blocks Zero is another 3D printer. Man, I thought we had an oversupply of robots, it’s world domination from 3D printers we need to be careful of. This one is designed to be an ultra portable version, claiming to print at 80mm/s on a 200mm cubed bed. That’s quick.

CrowdSupply

imix is a development board in pre-launch on Crowd Supply. It contains a Cortex M4 MCU, Nordic NRF51 bluetooth, ZigBee, battery charging and sensors. You can individually control and monitor power to each sub-section and also contains an auditable random number generator.

Tindie and others

This a great self contained CAN bus logger. It supports bit rates up to 1Mbps and supports any 2.0A and 2.0B CAN interfaces. Has an SD slot supporting up to 32GB cards. If you want to be able to snoop on your vehicles CAN interface, then get one of these.

Are you an audio engineer? You might find this SPI to DMX512 controller handy. Has three DMX channels with the first capable of being either master or slave. Contains an onboard MCU that handles all the logic grunt work so all you have to do is speak SPI.

Yet another DC and stepper motor controller for the Pi. This one is capable of controlling up to 6 DC motors or 3 steppers. It also has two additional PWM connections for servos or LEDs. Motor voltage from 2 to 11 volts and accessible over I2C.

And this is cool. Similar to two servo modules I mentioned in past roundups. This is a servo that has inbuilt positioning and is controlled via a 3 wire interface. It’s bi-directional so you can set the angle of the servo and query it’s temperature, load, speed, and position.

There’s also a GPRS/GSM based shield with onboard camera and SD slot. Supports all the usual GSM functions like SMS and voice calls, but remember GSM will be phased out in most countries. So might not be worth getting it.

This first Weeky Roundup of the year and we're already seeing lots of new goodies from SBCs, to WiFi modules, but really a tonne of new SBCs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #62: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup, which hasn't really been weekly for the past month, we're seeing a fair amount of retro kit, FPGAs and SBCs. Basically a whole lot of stuff that is really cool that you didn't know you needed. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #61: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup is actually a little short, but we have FPGAs, SBCs and other cool things I've found in my travels on the interwebs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #60: New Maker Products // News→

An SBC that's not really an SBC. Based on the NationalChip GX6605S, it runs a tiny Linux with a very small component count, but is it too cool to be usable? Continue reading The C-Sky SBC: Pi in the Sky? // Review→

In this review I take a look at one of the newer members of the Khadas family; The Khadas Edge and Khadas Captain. This board has some pretty interesting power management but, unfortunately, I saw the return of the magic smoke genie. Continue reading The Khadas Edge: A new captain

The LattePanda Alpha SBC is a bit of a beast not only in horse power, but in price. In this video I look at benchmarks on Windows, Linux and OSX and give my perspective on why LattePanda made a big mistake. Continue reading LattePanda Alpha: The big mistake? // Review→

This quick project shows you how to build an MQTT controlled RGB LED matrix panel in under 30 minutes, but I reckon it should take you a lot less. Continue reading Build an MQTT based RGB LED panel! // Project→

Do you want to be able to send an SMS over 20kms without using a mobile phone network? Here's one small project you can knock up in less than a day allowing you to send an SMS over LoRa. Continue reading SMS over LoRa: Long distance SMS without 4G //

If you're a fan of GoLang then your options are limited in the embedded world. So, here's a couple of options for you with a working bare metal example for an STM32 MCU written entirely in Go. Continue reading Running GoLang on an STM32 MCU. A quick tutorial.→

This is the second part of my video on building a simple PCB using EasyEDA. This time we'll be taking a look at how to use a solder stencil, placing SMD components, soldering using kitchen equipment and how to fix up your mistakes. Continue reading Make a PCB from scratch

A follow-up to my video tutorial: "Program an Atmel SAM without an IDE". I've created a Docker container on GitHub with a complete ASF build chain. Ready to go. Go for it! Continue reading Atmel Software Framework and build chain in a Docker container→

A bit of a different mailbag this week. Containing a lot of bits and pieces for upcoming projects and other odds and ends. Continue reading MickMake Mail #30: Gakken, JLCPCB, wicking and skulls // News→